


Desert Chill

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 21:40:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11814723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: But any comfort Taiga draws from all being as the Force wills it, all returning to the same Force (like none of it ever existed or mattered, like they don’t matter, like everything’s meaningless) is colder than the night air, even colder than it would be without Alex in his arms.





	Desert Chill

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justlikeswitchblades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justlikeswitchblades/gifts).



> 200 years after promising you taigalex r1....here it is <3
> 
> also, belated hbd alex part 2

It’s cold enough at night that Taiga can see his breath still in the air, like glass. Like crystals, not that he could ever not think about the temple, not that every day it doesn’t fucking hurt. Not that he doesn’t carry more and more ammunition just in case (just in case he’s surrounded by Imperials; just in case he has to bust himself and Alex out of the worst kind of situation, just in case it’s like the temple all over again only this time there’s no escaping, there’s no watching your home being taken over by people who treat you as collateral damage, a mosquito in the swamp, and he’d better take out as many as he can) but because he feels the weight. His body grows stronger as his beliefs crumble; the foot he’d once placed so strongly in the spiritual world is now firmly in the dust and sand of Jedha City, the stone steps leading into the alleyway, the floor of the apartment that he and Alex refer to as home now, except there’s always a bitter edge to his voice like juice stored so long it’s just begun to ferment when he says it.

Home is, was, the temple; there’s no going back to a place they can see outside the windows of the home someone else had abandoned (whether they’d meant to or they’d just left and never come back, waylaid or killed by the imperials or the rebels). Home is feelings that have fallen away from him, the magic and mysticism and prayer he’d once surrounded himself with, the things that feel like whatever higher powers there are just laughing at him, the ancients playing a prank they’d been dumb enough to believe.

Except Alex still believes; she still recites the chants like they’ll make it all come back, like it’s protecting her, keeping the Imperial forces from affecting her further. One of the temple elders, back when Taiga had been just a child, had said we all deal with grief in our own way. Taiga wonders if there’s going to ever be a time when he doesn’t deal with it. If there’s ever going to be a time when he looks up or down or to the side and doesn’t feel regret spilling over him, crystalizing in the air but not dissipating like his breath, staying and hanging around him like poison.

(“You let the venom seep into you,” Alex says, so simply like it must be true—and Taiga wants to ask what the fuck she knows about how he’s feeling because even though it’s supposed to be both of them going through the same shit she’s maintaining that calm, serene face that doesn’t even seem to crumble when they’re alone, and when Taiga’s at his most bitter he thinks maybe it’s because she can’t see it with her own eyes, that the only sight of the temple in her mind is how it should have stayed.)

Alex tangles her hand in his necklace, always searching for the chain with her hands, looking with the hardened pads of her fingertips until they find the metal, stuffed under his jacket or stuck to his bare chest, and she squints in the low light like if she tries hard enough she can see again. Out of habit, probably, but Alex is the type of person who believes so constantly, unwaveringly, that Taiga almost envies her even if he doesn’t get it. How could the Force will something like this on them? It’s bad enough already; it didn’t need to get worse. Alex’s fingers weave into the chain; she kisses him softly like she’s going to say it again that nothing’s going to bring him back (does she think Taiga doesn’t fucking know that). But any comfort Taiga draws from all being as the Force wills it, all returning to the same Force (like none of it ever existed or mattered, like they don’t matter, like everything’s meaningless) is colder than the night air, even colder than it would be without Alex in his arms.

“I know you make it hard for yourself,” she says, her hand on his knee, her face turned away.

“Do I need to?”

“No,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t.”

There are people whose fortunes she will tell, twisting words from what she pretends to see, what her other senses observe, party tricks for small coins, worth little when it comes to credits, but it’s not like credits are much of a standard here (one good way to tell who’s in the wrong place, who’s a clueless imperial stationed out here on leave, is by the currency in their purse, never mind the way they stare or maybe the accent). She stays here still, even though the few coins make all the difference some days. Maybe she’s not the only fool, though. Maybe—Force, Taiga wants to believe again. It doesn’t have to be easy (it wasn’t always easy to believe) but right now it seems impossible to keep on dreaming. He doesn’t want to think things are so hopeless that that’s all he’s got left, because he doesn’t, not half-baked untruths when everything precious, years of history, are being stripped bare from the temple like wallpaper in a chemical wash, leaving nothing but the barrenness of self-fulfilling prophecy (the wasteland that they think this place is, deride it as, even as they take and take from it until there’s nothing but dust).

But even if their beliefs are up in smoke, even if there’s nothing left to fight for, Taiga will fight for that nothing; he’s not going to let Alex fight alone at least, and he’ll fight for what was once there to fight for. He will fight against its absence; he’ll fight for Alex, be the champion she doesn’t need but that he wants to be for her anyway. He can’t protect the temple, but he can protect her in the ways she won’t protect herself, even if she’s letting him handle it when she could if she had to. When she’s been protecting him since he weighed about as much as the blaster on his back.

“It’ll get better,” she says, and sometimes he wonders if she’s saying all of this for her own benefit as much as his.

So in the dark he smiles, raising her hand to his mouth so she can trace it, see it, because even if he doesn’t believe, well, they’re here together. That’s not nothing.


End file.
